


Red Rocket Blues

by zombiescratch



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Body Dysphoria, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2019-07-12 03:23:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15986585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiescratch/pseuds/zombiescratch
Summary: Reed (Trans Male Sole Survivor) begins to feel symptoms of his hormonal treatment failing. He and his love interest MacCready go to find a replacement. Basically, a headcanon I've had for a long time about futuristic HRT with my guy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> writing fic again after a really long time of not doing any writing at all. i've thought about this for a long time, but i finally outlined the whole thing and started working. i always appreciate feedback about anything whatsoever. <3
> 
>  
> 
> [here's my links and about, where you can find my personal blog and art too](https://listography.com/zombiescratch)

Most evenings, Reed sits up on the roof of the Red Rocket truck stop with a lukewarm beer in one hand and MacCready’s shoulder under the other. Sometimes they have visitors, but so many of their compatriots are busy making the world a better place. Reed has far too heavy of a conscience to be a do-gooder for the rest of his life. 

Instead, he prefers eternal bachelorhood and unpleasantly warm beer and taking half-drunk potshots at any bloatflies or birds that dare to enter their airspace. He prefers MacCready. And he doesn’t worry about anything or anyone else anymore. 

He doesn’t think much of the ache in his abdomen when he gets up. It was a long night, with more than enough alcohol, and the cramp is accompanied by a pain in his head that’s started creeping in on the edges of his vision. He lets MacCready keep sleeping while he lets himself out the side door to steal an hour alone in the sunrise. 

Reed figures anyone who sees him nude and pissing on the derelict gas tank on the corner of the lot deserves it for trespassing on his property, but he knows he’s alone since the crisp morning silence is unmarred by turret alarms or barking. His contented sigh as he finishes up is one of the loudest things among the sleepy crickets and humming generators. On reflex, he glances down. 

“Goddamn, I drank a lot,” he mumbles to himself, but his throat catches when he sees the trickle of blood running down his thigh. There’s so little he can hardly feel it, but he can see it, bright red against his inner thigh. 

It’s been years since his reproductive organs have been capable of much more than occupying space in his gut, but he’s known since before the freeze that he’s just been on borrowed time. Clocking in at over two hundred years, he supposes that’s about as good as he could have hoped for. Better, even. It isn’t funny, but Reed sighs out a laugh. 

Later, after he’s cleaned up and brewed a pot of hot, coal black coffee, he runs the situation by a sleepy MacCready. He’s already thought it through himself a dozen times, but MacCready helps him think. Even if his only responses are quiet “uh-huh”s and questioning hums. He doesn’t understand a goddamn thing Reed is talking about and he knows it, but he also knows that doesn’t really matter. 

“It means my hormones-- my testosterone levels are dropping. And that means my old implant is failing. So my old parts are gonna wake up again.” Reed huffs out cigarette smoke in a frustrated breath. He passes the cigarette to MacCready, which leaves his fingers alone to fidget on the table and on the sides of his chipped coffee mug. “Don’t reckon anyone makes HRUs anymore, huh?” 

MacCready offers a helpless shrug. He’s never had to seek out something like this, doesn’t even fully understand it. Reed’s talked about the hormonal treatments before, explained that’s how come he grows a beard and has a bigger dick than any guy like him MacCready has ever met. The HRU-- “Hormone Regulation Unit”, he says-- was the cutting edge of that technology, before the bombs. The scar on Reed’s hip marks where it lays just under the skin, a small metal capsule of Prewar technology that MacCready has only ever seen slightly protrude during hard weeks of too much fighting and hiking and not enough food. He doesn’t know how something so little can do so much, but he knows it’s important from how agitated Reed’s been all morning. 

As if on cue, he slides their shared cigarette back to Reed’s waiting fingers, and he watches him puff distractedly with an eye on the horizon. The dog is trotting in from his long, spiralling perimeter search. 

“Dunno how much time I got before the symptoms start getting bad. Or before the unit goes septic or some shit,” Reed mutters. “Can’t remember when I got it. ‘70, maybe ‘71. It’s only meant to function ten years or so. Dunno if I expected to be alive long enough to replace it.” He laughs hoarsely and rubs his eye. Dogmeat gives him an extra long sniff before flopping down against the leg of the chair in a cloud of dust. His tail wags once, twice against the ground when Reed absently rubs his side with his bare foot. 

“Well pulling it out can’t be much worse than a bullet, can it?” MacCready offers. “Heck, maybe we can get someone to, y’know, reverse engineer it or whatever. I bet Hancock’s got the hookup with some smart folks, maybe even Curie could take a look.” 

Reed sighs and shrugs. “No point in it though, is there? This ain’t life or death, just fuckin’ annoying.” He finally stubs out the cigarette, barely long enough to hold between his fingers, into a tin filled to bursting with ashes and butts. He hisses and sucks the pad of his thumb he burned on the hot ash. “All the shit that survived the war, maybe there’s…” 

He trails off as he looks sideways toward the open garage door. Among his own creations are the prewar weapons and parts he’s collected, a half repaired dog house, the single most impressive collection of girlie magazines MacCready had ever seen… and his power armor. 

“The Brotherhood,” he mumbles, largely to himself. It snaps MacCready out of his sleepy daze. 

“The-- what? Naw, Reed, you know those fu-- tin cans give me the shivers.” MacCready grimaces. Plus, they always wanted something. They always wanted a piece of Reed’s pristine Prewar ass. 

“They’re obsessed with Prewar tech. If any implants survived, they’ll know some places to check, and their ship is probably the cleanest place to get this thing operated on regardless.” Reed taps his forefinger on the table in the way that means he’s made up his mind. He hums and nods, already confident in his plan. “Besides, they fuckin’ owe me.” Reed finally looks back to MacCready again, determination set in his jaw and his sharp gaze. 

“You’ll back me up, right? I ain’t setting foot on that blimp alone, and I know you wouldn’t let me if I tried.” Reed half smiles, crooked and rough around the edges like the rest of him. He sets his hand on MacCready’s, the one not loosely curled around his lukewarm cup of coffee. “Mac. Robert?” He emphasizes with a squeeze of their fingers together. Like he would or could say no. MacCready sighs in defeat. 

“Whatever you say,” he sighs with a tired little laugh. Reed squeezes their hands again, brings them to his lips to brush a kiss to MacCready’s rough knuckles. Their hands both are probably half callous. The other half is scars. 

“W-we should probably get ready to head out soon, then.” MacCready coughs out, because it certainly doesn’t still fluster him when Reed does that. For all his rough edges, he could be a real Romeo when he wanted. “I don’t want your uh, symptoms to get worse or something. We don’t even know for sure if the Brotherhood has any leads…”

“You’re right,” Reed’s smile softens and eventually fades. Not in a negative way, but into rested contentedness. His eyes slide over MacCready’s face and eventually off to scan blankly over the property. “But we can stay like this a little while longer.”

They finish their morning coffee with little more sound than the occasional sip and buzz of the fat summer flies.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise
> 
> [links](https://zombiescratch.carrd.co/)

Reed has never been intimidated by the likes of the Brotherhood. It turns out that self-righteousness is the same no matter the century, and the stick-up-their-asses military types will always find a beacon of order to flock to. When he shows up to the Prydwen, he just needs a few gruff words to take a minute of the head doctor’s time. 

MacCready insists on staying with him inside the doctor’s office rather than waiting outside and Reed doesn’t argue. He doesn’t worry so much about himself, but MacCready is twitchier than a coked up jackrabbit when he’s up here in the blimp, and he was serious about having him around for backup. The Brotherhood has never shown Reed any ill will in particular, but he’s half paranoid that they’ll knock him out and tie him down to dissect his sparkly Prewar body if he’s not careful. 

After a knock at the door, the doctor comes in with the usual clipboard and stern, thin-set lips. MacCready flinches almost imperceptibly, but Reed sees it. 

“So, Mr. Moreno,” says Knight-Captain Cade. “What can we help you with?” He looks up at Reed for the first time. He either doesn’t see or doesn’t care about MacCready’s in the corner. 

“Call me Reed. Are you familiar with HRU implants?”

“In passing, Mr. Moreno.” 

“I need a new one. If you know any places they might be left, I’d be happy to clear it out for you fine folks in exchange for you replacing my expired unit.”

Cade considers it and goes to his terminal. “What are your symptoms, if I may ask? Do you know how long your unit has been active?”

“I know I need a new one.” Reed counters, steely and stubborn. 

When Reed offers nothing else, Cade waits a beat, hums, and continues clicking away at his terminal. 

“Well, there are a few facilities in our records that we have yet to search,” Cade says in a clipped tone. He starts to write coordinates and names on a notepad. “I understand that HRU technology was quite cutting-edge at the time, so I will direct you to a couple experimental research laboratories. Perhaps they will have some old samples.” He rips the paper off its pad and hands it to Reed. The names are only vaguely familiar, but it’s a start. 

“Thanks, doc.” Reed folds up the lined paper and sticks it into his front jacket pocket. Then he reaches up to lightly tip his hat. “I’ll let you know if I find what I’m looking for.”

“The Brotherhood will greatly appreciate any Prewar medical knowledge you may be able to uncover,” the Knight-Commander gently reminds him. “The acquisition process goes much smoother when the location is already clear. There are hidden secrets that would greatly benefit all of the Commonwealth.”

“Yeah, sure.” Reed barks out a short, hoarse laugh and turns. “Whole Commonwealth my ass,” he mumbles under his breath, only loud enough for MacCready, who cracks out a nervous, unwilling laugh. 

The tension they both carry dissipates immediately as they leave the vicinity of the Brotherhood of Steel’s territory. Reed pulls the note out again to start inputting coordinates into his Pip-Boy. 

“You think there’s any good leads?” MacCready asks. He stretches and shakes out all his anxiety as they walk farther and farther from the airship that hangs stark and mechanical against the blue sky. 

“Maybe,” Reed grunts at a random cramp that spikes through his abdomen. “We’ll see. I’m not getting my hopes up.”

They’re relatively quiet the next few hours of hiking through the ruins of the city. Sometimes Reed mentions an old memory of a crumbling building, once whole, a different world that MacCready has never seen. Reed wants to find enough parts to repair an old-world gas car so he can drive through the city in an obnoxious hot rod again. That’s how he met his husband. He doesn’t talk about his husband often. 

It isn’t the first location, or the second, or even the third. They spend days clearing medical facilities of ghouls, raiders, super mutants, and all the similar ilk-- they cross out the list as they continue, and Reed packs the best supplies into dead drops for Preston’s Minutemen to pick up later. He’s getting anxious and frustrated with every dead end and he accepts the idea that he may never find what he’s looking for. It isn’t life or death, but damn if it didn’t make life better. 

MacCready is tired, but he doesn’t complain. Reed notices anyway. After this one, he resolves that they’ll go home and take a break a while before continuing on. He says as much and MacCready insists he’s good to keep going, but Reed is tired too. Just one more, and they’ll go home. 

He looks up at the sign, mirrored by the list in his hand. Lifetech Cryogenics Research Facility. Just one more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna just upload chapters without editing too much so i'll finally finish this thing! 
> 
> [links](https://zombiescratch.carrd.co/)

The door is locked. The other doors are all caved in, barricaded, or otherwise untraversable, but from what Reed can tell, the doors in the loading bay seem to just be locked. 

Not only is this door locked, it seems to be locked with some kind of industrial system that has long since malfunctioned past the point of ever opening willingly ever again. “Bullshit,” Reed mumbles to himself, and goes on to ferret out any other entrances. 

It looks like the building is tighter than a virgin on her wedding night, so Reed picks up a sledgehammer from the workyard and whacks the huge steel doors a few times. When the handle breaks, he tries kicking. When he stubs his toe, he cusses again. 

Reed has decided that if only for spite, if this is the last thing he does, he will shed this mortal coil happy knowing that this door is open. 

MacCready looks nervous when he explains his plan, but goes along with it and takes a high vantage point to keep lookout.

Meanwhile, Reed is busy tying together a bundle of hand grenades with some fishing line and fastening those to the door. He keeps one end long, hooked loosely to the trigger of a pin and gingerly reels the line out a good distance away, behind a concrete blockade. He’s tempted to watch the explosion but errs on the side of caution and curls up behind his barricade before yanking on the line.

The explosion sounds spectacular at the very least, and better yet, Reed hears the doors come crashing down. Unfortunately, so has every ghoul and super mutant in a square mile. He lets out a low breath and gets on his feet when he hears the first crack of MacCready’s rifle. 

Not as many baddies show up as he’d feared, which is good, because he’d used all his grenades on the door. Reed only suffers a few extra scrapes and a lighter ammo belt by the time they clear out the curious wildlife drawn by the explosion. 

“Nice shootin’,” Reed drawls with a wink and a dimpled smile, making MacCready stumble as he crosses the street. 

“You uh, you alright?” MacCready stutters out. Hesitantly, he reaches to examine a new tear in the sleeve of Reed’s jacket. As expected, Reed shrugs him off. Reed has hardly let him touch him in the past few days since this mess started. Doesn’t say anything, but the tension is there, drawn tight as his mouth as he taps out a stale cigarette and avoids eye contact. 

“Sorry,” says Reed, and MacCready makes a small noise of understanding. One, two sparks of a ratty old lighter fill the awkward silence. “Let’s go.” He exhales, tired. Just one more. 

The above-ground floors are all offices and meeting rooms, and largely crushed by the neighboring building. Luckily, they’re not interested in searching the administrative areas, but Reed does take some time to snoop around for some odds and ends. Some batteries, some ammo, a mug for Sturges. Best of all, they find a keycard and what looks like a janitor’s keyring. They’re able to get into the basement level easy. 

“Thanks, Megan,” Reed mumbles to the faded, smiling ID photo on the card. Awful kind of a woman to die in this building in just the right circumstances such that the magnetic tape on this keycard survived. Reed wonders if he ever met her. 

The laboratory doors open with a mechanical woosh of cool air and dust. He hears before he sees the old fluorescents above flicker on, dim but useable. Bless these Prewar generators. They start descending the lit path down into the first metal-plated basement level, boots thumping and making the pristine stairs vibrate with a tinny whine. A good six feet of concrete separates the basement ceiling and ground floor above. Reed double checks that his shotgun is loaded. 

“This place looks pretty dam-- pretty dern nice. Like nobody’s been here at all,” MacCready wonders aloud. The stairs open into a wide hall with what looks like more cubicles and computers, all humming with newfound life after laying dormant for years. 

“Yeah,” Reed agrees vaguely, still cautious with his shotgun hanging loose in his right hand and his left hand at his belt where he keeps his knife. He steps into what looks like a manager’s glass-walled office to rummage around. 

MacCready looks over his shoulder and whistles. “Place goes deep, don’t it?” There’s a blueprint of the building, helpfully framed behind cracked glass. It looks as if the shocks from the bombs shook it loose from the wall. Not so pristine after all. 

Reed shakes the glass free of the frame and takes out the print, picks it up to look at it in the light. “Yeah,” he agrees with that faraway tone again, eyes scanning the floor plan. If they’re lucky, it’s accurate, and there won’t be any surprises, but Lady Luck has seemed far too kind so far for this to go smoothly. 

“Nowhere to go but down,” Reed sighs as he carefully folds up the map. “Looks like storage is all the bottom floor. Figures.” He cracks half a smile, and MacCready can’t help but smile too. Even if they can’t find what Reed needs, they’re sure to find something in a location that looks as clean as this. And at the end of they day, they’ll still go home.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> didn't even reread this one, hopefully the writing doesn't suffer lmao
> 
> [links](https://zombiescratch.carrd.co/)

The basement elevators are operational, but Reed doesn’t really trust it. As stubborn as these Prewar generators are, there’s always the chance they just give out, and Reed isn’t getting his ass stuck in a decrepit old elevator again. 

After the first administrative floor of the basement, they find laboratories full of old equipment and experiments. There’s the distinct odor of bleach and rubbing alcohol under all the dust. But as they descend into the laboratories, the pristine facade of the upper floor begins to crack. 

There’s some shattered equipment by the elevator door, and experiments seemingly mid-progress left out to evaporate or corrode. They find a fossilized lunch half eaten. Reed checks his shotgun for the fifth time. 

It seems worse with every floor they descend. First blood, then parts, then bodies, startlingly well preserved in their corporate tomb. They both nudge a few of the mummified corpses to see if they’re just resting ghouls, but none bite back. If Reed could load his gun ten times in excess, he would.

The temperature starts to drop as they reach the second to last floor. Not just the coolness of a space devoid of sun or living things, but a distinct icy bite. It’s summer up top, only starting to descend into autumn, but the cold feels too strange to be comforting.

There are more bodies. Some of these definitely were ghouls, and they’d taken chunks out of the apparently human bodies that had been stuck down here with them. This floor is the most violently disheveled they’ve seen yet, with aged brown blood puddled everywhere and makeshift weapons and body parts strewn around. It’s only a matter of time before one of the bodies on the floor snarls. 

Reed clocks the ghoul in the head almost immediately, leaves a crater in the tiled floor and a spray of blood where its brain had been. The room is eerily quiet after this initial shotgun blast, until there’s shuffling from another corner of the room. 

MacCready gets the next one, standing back to back with Reed so they can keep an eye on the room. Another gets closer to them after a wide shot on Reed’s behalf and he has to bash it in the head so MacCready can get a good shot on it while he reloads. They move closer to the wall. 

What Reed thought was a corpse grabs his ankle as they move, and he grunts and half trips in the ghoul’s grasp. MacCready turns, gets distracted shooting another ghoul taking advantage of the confusion. The ghoul clutching Reed hisses out some vapor before being obliterated by buckshot. 

Once the two get their bearings in the corner, it’s easy to take care of the few remaining feral ghouls. More of a nuisance than anything, but Reed’s ankle still fucking hurts for some reason. He says as much. 

“Lemme look at it,” MacCready offers, surprised when Reed takes him up on it and sets himself up on a table to pull up his pant leg. Reed leans over to look at it himself. 

“It didn’t get me bad, but it feels… cold,” he says with a scrunched expression, rubbing a rough hand over where his skin looks red and a little swollen. “Some shit down here changed these ghouls…” 

They get moving again when Reed’s ankle stops tingling, feeling as though they have only breached the tip of the proverbial iceberg of this facility.

It’s colder in the deepest basement level. Their breaths leave in foggy clouds and Reed’s ankle itches again. 

The ghouls down here aren’t even trying to hide. No doubt they’ve heard all the commotion up above, so they’re alert and ready when the door creaks open. 

This floor is different from the rest, not only because of all the ghouls, but also because it looks like a hall of vaults instead of a laboratory. Purely storage. They’ll have a lot to rummage through after they take care of these ghouls. 

MacCready fires a shot as Reed moves down the narrow hall, making space for him with his shotgun and pure brute force. Reed has always been a force to be reckoned with, a good shot but even more impressive as a brawler with his thick frame and a low center of gravity. When he isn’t shooting a baddie square in the head, he’s shoving them back with a shoulder or gutting with his bayonet. They work well together, Reed and MacCready, with one in the front line and the other keeping an eye on the back, respectively. 

Reed can breathe easy for the seconds it takes to reload his shotgun, knowing the ghoul edging up to him will fall while he’s preoccupied. These ghouls are weird like the one that grabbed him, distinctly cold to the touch and almost blue-black in color. Their eyes almost look like dark snowflakes and it’s pretty, in a way. None seem to retain a scrap of their humanity.

The storage floor seems largely empty when they hear a metallic clanging from the end of the hall and a huge beast lumbers out. It’s a ghoul, but three times the size of the rest, covered in what looks like frost interrupted by chunks of ice erupting from its skin. It’s been mutated terribly, screeching in anger or agony both as it sees the humans at the beginning of the hall. MacCready gets a shot in its neck before it lunges and runs forward. 

Getting shot in the head two or three times doesn’t seem to bother it much; the bullets make a dull thud like they’ve hit rock. Buckshot staggers it for a moment, but that’s all Reed gets before he has to scramble to the side or else be slammed into the opposite wall. Another stagger isn’t enough to buy him a reload, and it crowds him up against the wall with bony, frigid hands threatening to grab his neck. He hears MacCready cuss but it feels faraway, like the rifle shot that attempts to dislodge him from the beast’s grasp. 

Reed braces his back against the wall and kicks out with both legs, which gets him a few inches to jam his bayonet into the ice ghoul’s chest. It screeches at him, breath misty and phlegm bursting out as tiny icicles that melt almost instantly on contact with Reed’s skin. He twists the knife and jams it around in the ghoul’s innards and it lets go of him, leaving red, almost purple skin in its wake. 

He really wishes he hadn’t used all his grenades on getting in this place. He reaches for the next best thing he has while he shoves the creature off his bayonet, making it stumble back and give him more room. Reed smashes the molotov like it’s a bar fight, right on the ghoul’s forehead, before giving it a more forceful shove with the butt of his gun. 

“LIGHT,” he yells hoarsely, and thanks his lucky stars that MacCready just Gets him in situations like these. In a moment there’s a lit molotov sailing past him, smacking the ghoul in its wide torso and lighting it up in a magnificent blaze. 

Reed has to dodge a blind swipe as it cries out, long and agonizing while it stumbles around the narrow hall. He tosses a lump of something or another further down the hall and it reacts, runs off toward the noise before painfully, pitifully falling to the ground. The body seems to steam and melt on the ground as the fire simmers out, flesh disintegrating like it’s been dumped with acid instead of vodka.

The only sound left is the bubbling of the ice ghoul’s corpse and the two humans standing breathing heavy with the thrill of the fight. MacCready makes the first move and rushes to Reed, doesn’t quite touch him as he tries to get a good look at where the ghoul yanked him by the neck. 

“Holyfuckinshit Reed are you okay? What the hell WAS that thing?” MacCready gasps out. He doesn’t like the look of the welts on Reed’s neck, how he winces when he stretches and pats his side where another frostbitten patch likely is. 

“No fucking clue,” Reed mutters, smiling nervously. He feels his own neck and winces at the heat of his hand. “Fuck, I want a beer.” 

MacCready almost jumps in surprise when Reed pulls an arm around him, pulls him close and sticks his face square into his shoulder. Reed may have bulk but MacCready has height, like a string bean in a coat. They both just stand there and breathe. They need it. 

“I swear this week has been a slice of Hell on earth,” Reed finally mutters, head turned so his mouth is almost against MacCready’s neck. “It’s alright, we’ll get home after this.” MacCready isn’t sure who he’s saying that for, but he nods, nervous, and gladly lets Reed kiss him. 

He finally closes his arm to reciprocate Reed’s hug and they’re like that for a few more moments. When Reed pulls away, he straightens his Stetson on his head and looks around at the doors. 

“I’ll take left, you take right?” MacCready offers, still feeling warm and fuzzy but the reality of being in a freezing basement is setting in, and he wants to haul Reed’s ass to a doctor as soon as possible. 

“Holler if you need me,” Reed agrees with a nod. He reflects, fleetingly, on how good it is he need not do this alone.


End file.
